Taking the pain out of BI

To create the discipline required to collect, manage and ensure the completeness and accuracy of the information required to make BI effective, have a cadre of good business analysts at the ready. These analysts tend to have a very good understanding of the business, as well as what the information in the business means from the front end and how that feeds into the back end. It's also important to sell key members of the senior team on a long-term vision of an architecture that will support opportunities in the future. That means using an approach that's both strategic and structured, and doing a good selling job on rising costs. Have a realistic view of where your data is at the start, and what it will take to improve its quality. Invest in a good data architect and ensure that your BI architecture is integrated to the rest of your architecture and not just a bolt-on to the rest of your systems. Understand the breadth and cost of your existing BI systems, including the hidden systems in end-user computing, and understand how they integrate with your solution. Finally, make sure you have executive alignment and real BI demand from the business.

Learn more about taking the pain out of business intelligence:
- read the article [1] at CIO Canada

ALSO:
- read this [2] about making the most of business intelligence
- this [3] on Business Intelligence 101
- this [4] on how collaboration increases business intelligence
- and this [5] on intelligent business intelligence